a good word about beginning's end

A little more than a year ago, my Grandpa Jack died. Last month, my great aunt Peggy -- my Grandma Kay's sister and Jack's wife -- passed. Yesterday, the Pope died.

Now, I'm not comparing my relatives to the Pope, but. . . . Well, maybe I am. Certainly, they weren't the world figures, the leaders of social and spiritual change that the Pope was, but they were Christians, and Catholics to be specific. They were faithful and devout in their belief. They were kind and loving people, whose generosity of spirit knew no bounds. They faced the ends of their lives with pragmatism and a real peace. And my understanding is that the Pope had a similar experience.

Of course, I can't speak to the Pope's passing, though the reports of his serenity, of his visible participation in the prayers his closest advisors and friends said over him were broadcast across the world. I think I briefly overheard someone say that toward the end, as he passed in and out of consciousness he saw the white light. And I was thankful for those reports, just as I was horrified by the simultaneous analysis of his failing organs. The man was the POPE. The leader of the Catholic Church whose message was all about the greatness of the love of God. And you're discussing his kidneys?! I was completely disgusted at the grotesqueness of it all. But then, you know, I couldn't help but think, the human body is grotesque.

Grotesque in all it's fluids and secretions and need, need, needs. Beautiful, too, in it's perfect mechanization, it's order and symmetry. In our youth -- those us blessed with good health -- are given the joy of it. In our dotage however, I think, it can become a burden.

My grandfather, like the Pope, was such an amazingly physical man in his youth that age and his body's failing, was agony for him. A few months before he died, he and I went on a walk. He was so weak that we got only as far as the next-door neighbor's driveway before we had to turn around. "If only I could walk again," he said. It broke my heart in the same way it saddened me to observe the enfeebled Pope, bereft of his power of speech, robbed of his ability to pray out loud.

My grandfather died with his three children and two of his grandchildren around him. And it was an amazing time for us all. Despite the sadness, we were incredibly grateful for the legacy of love that he and my grandmother had given us. There was even a moment of profound and comic relief in the form of the Irish priest who'd come to offer him last rites. The man just simply refused to accept the solemnity of the situation. "ARE YA STILL WITH US JOHN?," he shouted at my grandfather's inert form, startling him I dare say, back from the very doorstep of death. My grandfather blinked blearily. "YER'RE A BLESSED MAN," he continued, "TO HAVE ALL YER CHILDREN HERE -- ANN, JOHN AND CATHY! YER GRANDCHILDREN, JOHN AND JILL! YOU'LL BE PUTTING IN A GOOD WORD FOR US WITH THE FATHER, NO DOUBT!"

No doubt.

Later that night, in a moment of solitude, as we all lay sleeping, Grandpa Jack took his leave.

I like to think that at the instant of his passing, he found himself in the body of his youth -- only better. That he found himself running -- running -- toward the gates of heaven and into the loving, waiting arms of those who'd gone before him. I see him lifting my grandmother high in the air and spinning her around and around, the sheer joy of the reunion greater than any he's ever known. His parents and grandparents standing around their fair-haired, blue-eyed boy with smiles in their hearts and tears of love in their eyes, just as they were at his birth, his baptism, his wedding. I see every dog he's ever loved -- and he had many -- barking in happy excitement at their master's return. (I do believe our pets go to heaven and I've already told Fred that when he goes, he should find my Grandma Nora, because she's a sucker with the treats.)

When Peggy died, she did so on her own terms. Diagnosed last year with breast cancer, she chose not to undergo all the radical "life-saving" measures that increase the quantity, if not the quality, of time left. She was old, she said. She'd lived a long life and was at was at peace with her God. Let it be. And then one day, about a month ago, she said to her daughter, "I think it's time." She asked to be taken to the hospital so that her daughter's last memory of her wouldn't be of her mother's death in her home. Until the very last minute, she was a mother to her baby girl.

She was never even admitted. She died before they could check her in, with three of her four children around her. (Her oldest, Mary, lived the furthest away and couldn't make it in time.) The thing is, Peggy never truly lost consciousness and as she moved from this world to the next, she narrated the experience for her children. She saw the white light. She cried out at the vision of Jesus. And moments before she was gone, she saw my Grandma Kay.

When Mary arrived, she wasn't surprised, as were the others, that their father hadn't been at heaven's door to greet their mother. "I was talking to Daddy the whole way here," she told her siblings. "He couldn't greet Mommy, because he was with me."

The Pope, I believe had no living relatives, but his children of the Church were by his window, at his side, with him in prayer by the millions, just as my grandfather's children and grandchildren were with him. Just as Peggy's kids were with her. And I can only imagine the host waiting to greet John Paul II in the afterlife. I can only imagine his euphoria at finally being with God to whom he'd so completely given his life. To be able to prostrate himself before the Lord, in praise, the way he'd done in his youth. To dance in the temple of God, as David did. To dance as my grandparents did in the living room when they were young.

It's kind of nice to think about.

I don't wonder that my grandfather, Peggy and the Pope died with such peace because they knew that this corporeal ending was no more than the beginning of something greater. Perhaps, in the end, it's just that our bodies, beautiful and grotesque, are no more than cocoons, providing nourishment and residence for our nascent souls and if we're lucky enough -- blessed enough -- to reach old age, they grow brittle and frail just in time for our gorgeous emergence into a greater incarnation. An incarnation without the frailty of the human form to slow us. An incarnation where dancing is a happy imperative.

And that's kind of nice to think about, too. Especially knowing that those happy, dancing people are putting in a good word for me and mine, every chance they get.